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Revolutionizing Olefin Production with the electric High Mach Steam Cracking Reactor

Project description

Power-to-heat solution for sustainable and efficient chemical industry

Innovations and novel solutions are needed to transform industry and other sectors to achieve decarbonisation, the Green Deal, and the Paris Agreement goals. The chemical industry plays a crucial role in the production chains of various sectors and industries. However, transitioning to greener and more sustainable solutions has been challenging due to costs and difficulties in manufacturing the necessary building blocks. The ERC-funded e-CRACKER project aims to transform the chemical industry by developing a power-to-heat solution using shockwave heating, enabling more efficient and sustainable light olefin production. The project will research, develop, and demonstrate the required sustainable, efficient, and flexible technologies.

Objective

Power to heat (P2H) is expected to be the first type of electrification that will drastically transform the chemical industry. This holds in particular for producing its major building blocks: the 300 Mt/yr light olefins via steam cracking at more than 800°C. e-CRACKER will implement P2H by so-called shockwave heating, enabling an increase in temperature to >1000°C in 10 ms, an order of magnitude faster than the current furnace-based technology in a revolutionary High-Mach reactor. When combined with insight in the pressure-dependence of the cracking chemistry this will allow to avoid undesired side reactions and to increase olefin yields of ethane and plastic waste derived naphtha cracking by 10 wt.% compared to yield gains of 0.1 wt.%, at best, when applying alternative P2H such as resistive heating.
e-CRACKER will:
1. generate new fundamental understanding of shock wave heating and kinetics under sub- and supersonic conditions;
2. demonstrate the practical applicability of an open-source, high fidelity Multiscale Modeling platform in combination with finite rate chemistry for turbulent reacting and rotating flows;
3. develop a compact, energy-efficient, electrified High-Mach reactor generating shockwaves and minimizing side products by avoiding back-mixing;
4. pave the way to avoid more than 200 Mt CO2/yr emissions with a scalable, flexible, step-by-step implementable technology driven by renewable electricity.
Starting from fundamental local and global (non-)reactive data collection (WP1), and a high-fidelity open source Multiscale Modeling framework (WP2) novel 3D reactors will be designed in silico using advanced optimization (WP3). The power of the approach will be demonstrated in a 3D-printed High-Mach reactor, which, by operating under unconventional cracking conditions (lower pressures and faster heating) achieves yield increases of more than 10 wt% (WP4), contributing in a decisive way to the transition of the chemical industry.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 496 000,00
Address
SINT PIETERSNIEUWSTRAAT 25
9000 GENT
Belgium

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Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Oost-Vlaanderen Arr. Gent
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 496 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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